Electrical Resistance
by Black Sands Britannica
Summary: Being a double-agent for an ex-member of a psychotic Company of supervillains was hectic enough. But being partnered with Elle Bishop was just plain torture. Danger closes in on Mohinder from around every covert corner of Primatech Research, as the Haitian meets his final showdown, & Sylar manipulates his shiny new toy-of-mass-destruction, Maya Herrera. Post-Season 1, slightly AU.
1. Initiation

**===Electrical Resistance===**

**Disclaimer:**_Tim Kring and his cohorts own Heroes, the TV series. I claim no ownership of heroes, nor superheroes, nor any marginally heroic people, nor even the word 'heroes' which was coined by the ancient Greeks. Anyone Heroes characters featured in this story have just temporarily been shifted to a slightly alternate reality._

* * *

**=Chapter 1: Initiation=**

* * *

For the first time since the Northeast blackout of 2003, Manhattan failed to cancel out the starlight.

The EMP from Peter Petrelli's nuclear pulse had wiped out the electric, streetlights, and backup generators for miles. Ergo, the sky was clear, and the stars shone cold. There was no visible fallout, but standing around Kirby Plaza was now as risky as picnicking at the Exclusion Zone at Chernobl.

"You and I are going to have to disappear for a while, alright Molly?" Mohinder whispered over the shoulder of the ten-year old, as the wail of ambulances faded into the distance.

He felt her nodding tightly, clutching him around the chest like he was her only lifeline in this storm of chaos.

Pulling out of the brief, kneeling hug, Mohinder stood, grasped Molly's small hand, and started leading her around the side of Linderman's skyscraper, towards his taxi.

Mohinder twisted the key in the lock, and clicked open the back passenger door, letting Molly in first. "No- no seatbelts," he told her, as she automatically started to buckle up. "Lie flat on the floor, below the seats. Keep out of sight."

"Okay," Molly whispered back, sliding off the seat, and getting down on her stomach amid the crumbs of dirt and dusty gum wrappers.

Mohinder shut the door, circled around the hood, and got in on the driver's side. He fit the key into the ignition, turned it. Nothing. Startled, Mohinder tried again, and again- no use. The car was dead. _Well this can't be right,_ Mohinder thought. _An old diesel car like this should work as sort of a Faraday cage, trapping out and redirecting EMPs, and thus protecting the electrical system inside. They've done experiments- at least I think that's what it said in that 'Popular Science' article. And __other__ cars obviously survived the nuclear pulse, _Mohinder mentally added, as a black SUV drove into the parking lot... and parked right behind his taxi.

As soon as Mohinder saw the ominous glint of horn-rimmed glasses in the rearview, his hand shot to the pocket of his light jacket, clutching the grip of his gun.

"Don't bother," Bennet began conversationally, as he ambled alongside the taxi. "I took out the spark plugs while you were chatting up the paramedics. You know, just on the off chance that you might try rushing off and absconding into the night without saying goodbye."

Pocketing the car keys, yanking his door open, then pressing lock, Mohinder stepped out onto the blacktop. "Goodbye," he retorted, smacking the car door back shut, and leveling his gun squarely at Bennet's chest, just above his blue sling and broken arm. "You can leave now."

Bennet was still smiling, eternally unfazed as ever.

"Dad!" an alarmed teenage voice whined from Bennet's car.

"In a minute, Claire," Bennet called back over his shoulder. Glancing back at Mohinder, he added in flatline seriousness, "Let me be clear, Doctor Suresh. I'm on a tight schedule. I have a plane to catch. And Molly Walker's coming with me."

"Like hell she is!" Mohinder snapped, guardedly maneuvering between Bennet and the _N.Y.C. TAXI _decals on the yellow cab. "Absolutely _not! _Molly stays with me!"

"It's non-negotiable," Bennet replied coolly, stepping in closer, totally ignoring the gun.

Mohinder's knuckles paled as he gripped the gun tighter, and strove, probably unsuccessfully, to look intimidating. "Not even a half-hour ago, you were going to _shoot _her-" he reminded Bennet acidly, "-and now you expect I'll let you just take her, just like that?"

Bennet was too close now- Mohinder took a jerky step backwards, but his elbow collided with the 'OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR' sticker on the taxi's driver-side mirror, distracting him just for an instant-

-With one aggressive motion, Bennet performed a one-handed gun-snatch with his unbroken arm, flipped the stolen weapon around, and aimed it square in Mohinder's face, right between the eyes.

"Do I have to explain again to you the meaning of 'non-negotiable', Dr. Suresh?" Bennet inquired tersely, as Mohinder back-stepped horizontally along the yellow parking space lines, with no convenient plan in mind, trying to lead Bennet away from Molly and the taxi.

Cautiously, angrily, but trying not to simmer over, Mohinder replied, "Bennet, she's still ill. She _needs _me."

"Oh, I need you too, Suresh- I need you to stay with the Company, on the inside, but on _our _side."

"You want me to be a double agent?" Mohinder replied, taken aback.

"When the Company agents find you here, you're going to tell them that I knocked you out and took Molly by force, and there was nothing you could do about it."

"But what if they find out I'm lying?" Mohinder pointed out sensibly.

"You won't be."

Unexpectedly, Bennet backhanded Mohinder with the gun.

Mohinder reflexively tried to throw a punch in the direction of those horn-rimmed glasses- but mid-motion, the gun's grip hit him twice more. The geneticist recoiled dizzily, shadows clouded his vision, his head rang like reverberating sheet metal, his knees buckled out from under him, and he slumped limply to the pavement. The last thing he heard was Molly's panicked yelps, humming away into vague white noise.


	2. Starfish Kid

**=Chapter 2: Starfish Kid=**

* * *

_Well, that was exhilarating,_ Claude thought, peering up at the sky. _Nothing like the threat of being particleized and blasted to smithereens to liven up one's evening. Quite the spectacle, _he had to admit, as he stroked the cottony head feathers of one of his nameless, lavender-grey roof pigeons. _All that shinyness and bang. So Peter Petrelli really pulled through after all. So now, huzzah, I don't have to feel like such a colossal idiot for having come back to look for him._ "I only came back ta save you fellahs," Claude lied to his pigeon, just to re-enforce the 'I-care-for-no-one' status quo. Alright, so _maybe_ he hadn't been _too _fond of the idea of letting eight million New Yorkers get incinerated either. Basically, the impact of what was going to happen to New York finally caught up with him as he'd tried to invisibly sneak onto that flight to Australia, and he couldn't do it. He couldn't just leave everyone to cark it.

Not that he'd had much in the plan department when he came back- just run a lot, desperately revisit Peter's apartment, revisit Isaac's loft, revisit the rooftop he'd thrown Peter off not long ago. Try to find Peter. Try to calm him down. Try to get him out of the city. Try to save Peter, and everyone else.

_So much for that idea,_ Claude thought, staring at the empty sky. _Poor kid. Guess he got to be a hero after all, lotta good it did him._

There was a flap of dusty wings. Putting his closest feathered pal back down on the ornate motif atop the Devoux building, Claude took off for the closest elevator. He tried to push the buttons, but they were still as annoyingly dead as they'd been when he'd run up all these steps. Rolling his eyes, Claude returned to the stairwell. _Good exercise right?_ said the tiny, caged away part of him that was still an optimist. _Shut up you, _Claude told that part of himself. _Just cuz I came back, don't mean I have to turn into a blind, gullible Pollyanna again. Nothing good about these stairs at all, not a bit, not whatsoever. They're loathable stairs._

After what seemed like forever, Claude finally exited the Devoux building, and took off into the alleys, invisible as usual. _No point in sticking around, _he thought, as disturbed puddles and wet, empty footsteps littered the cracked alley concrete behind him, and his trenchcoat flapped against his stiff thighs. _Time to catch another plane and disappear in the Outback... maybe catch a plane in New Jersey, he corrected, glancing at the lightless bulbs of a line of streetlights. The New York airport might be a bit worse for wear after that explosion knocked out the electric._

Claude tripped over half a brain, got up, brushed the puddle-water off the front of his sweater and grey trenchcoat, started walking away- then froze, spun around, and did a double-take.

The brain was expanding- more flesh was appearing from nowhere, then strands of nerves trickled over the concrete, then one by one, the vertebrae of a spine snaked out from the brain, and a narrow skull started calciumating and caging over the brain. Nightmarish eyes formed in the hollow cavities of the eye-sockets, heart and lungs and intestines formed over the top of the spine, ribs grew outwards and curved in over the internal organs, merging into a sternum in the middle, pelvis and shoulder-blades emerged, followed by leg-bones and arms-bones, teeth, finger-bones, and finally, a complete skeleton. Muscles, nerves, arteries and veins slithered throughout the skeleton in the proper places, a trachea, emerged, a tongue, lungs-

Claude jumped despite his best efforts as the forming body started _screaming_, in a choked, gargling way, the worst sort of anguish he'd ever heard in a human voice. The ghoulish body started thrashing convulsively, splattering blood everywhere, contracting over onto its side as the final muscles took shape, and skin formed over the raw red flesh- eyelids over the eyes, narrow lips over the screaming teeth. Finally, the eyes opened- wide, bloodshot, and brown.

Claude recognized that crooked-mouth and V-shaped jawbone even underneath all that blood, and even though Peter was bald and eyebrowless now, since his hair follicles hadn't, apparently, regenerated to the same length as before. "You!" Claude exclaimed in absolute awe. "You're alive!? You regenerated- from a _muffin-sized _piece of your brain, you regenerated! Blimey, are there more of you around 'ere? Lotsa clones all made from bits and stuff of you? Nah, guess not," Claude concluded, catching sight of a few smaller pieces of brain stuck to the ground like used grey bubble-gum. "Well, nevermind. Welcome back, mate! Good job on not killing eight million people- oh, here, you better take this," he added, slipping off his trenchcoat and handing it down to Peter.

Peter coughed violently as he rocked up off his side and onto his knees, stared at his bloody hands, stared at the puddle of dark red blood he was practically swimming in, and finally, peered up at Claude for a few long moments with a look of absolute confusion plastered over his funny face. "Thanks..?" Peter mumbled finally, accepting the proffered trenchcoat.

"You _can_ see me, right?" Claude wondered.

"Yes... who- who are you?" Peter asked, as he stuck his bloody arms through the oversized sleeves, and stumbled to his feet, losing his balancing act, and stumbling elbows-first against a graffitied alley wall, catching himself before he fell again.

"The name's Morton," Claude invented on the spot. "Don't you remember me, Starfish Kid? I'm hurt."

Peter's face twisted up in thought as he buttoned the many plastic buttons of the trenchcoat over his bare torso and legs. "I- I don't. I don't remember. I'm sure I'll remember in a minute, just give me a minute I... I'm sorry," Peter interjected sharply, "did you just say I _regenerated_?!"

"Nice to see those ear canals regenerated properly."

"That's... I don't... I mean, I'm not..." All of Peter's arguments of how crazy that sounded were cut short by him taking in all the blood again, and inspecting the perfectly undamaged skin on his fingers and toes as he flexed them experimentally.

"Anyway, congratulations for not being dead!" Claude beamed, throwing a quick, rough hug over Peter's shoulder, then pulling back again casually. "Doesn't mean you're not still a danger to, let me think- oh right, that was it- everybody!"

"What are you talking about?" Peter asked hazily.

"Well, congratulations on forgetting everybody! Good onya! Now you don't need to be bogged down with all those pesky emotional attachments, so you don't need to go impersonatin' weapons of mass destruction! Well done!" _This really is fortunate, _Claude thought with uncommon upbeatness. _Peter's alive, but he's not dangerous- as long as he stays away from all those other Specials who'll make him an emotional wreck again. Maybe I'll take the kid to Australia with me. Darwin Australia, or the Kimberleys. Somewhere majorly unpopulated- just in case. Nah, not in the mood for babysitting, _Claude decided. _I'll just buy him a ticket to the Western Sahara or something. _

Peter was hugging the trenchcoat against his thin chest, still staring at Claude with that lost puppy expression. "I've- been _trying,_ really trying, and I can't remember your name from anywhere- or what I'm doing here, or- I can't even remember _my _name," Peter admitted helplessly. "You know me... right? You talk like you know me... So... this is all so crazy- but- could you just- could you just- um, what I'm saying is- who am I?"

"Like I'm gonna tell you!" Claude scoffed. "Trust me, you're better off like this. Everybody is." With that, he started strolling off again, leaving Petrelli to his own devices. _I gave him the coat, I've done my good deed for the decade._

"Why?" Peter pleaded. "_Why _won't you? Why not? Why won't you tell me? Can you at least tell me my name?"

"Poodle."

"Not funny," Peter muttered sulkily.

"Not joking," Claude shot back over his shoulder, unable to resist tormenting him a bit. _I mean, how often do you get to scare amnesiacs with the prospect of having a stupid name?_

"My name _can't _be Poodle," Peter insisted stubbornly.

"Why, because you have no hair, Sphinx Cat? Yeah, okay, fine, kidding. I'll tell you your name. Listen up. Its..." Claude allowed for a suitably dramatic pause, then spun around and replied offhandedly, "...Pomeranian." Spinning back away from Peter, he continued prowling off down the empty alleyway.

"Who _am_ I?!" Peter growled, catching up, and falling in close, barefoot pace behind Claude. "How do I know you? Are we friends? Are we _not_ friends? Are you maybe going to _talk _to me? Morton- _please! _My mind is a total, copy-paper blank! I can't even remember- I don't know where I came from, who I'm related to- I don't even know how I remember how to _talk_ when I can't even remember who my own parents are! How can I remember concepts of words and what they mean without any actual memories attached to them? It doesn't make sense! Could you just tell me _something!" _Peter yapped desperately, snatching Claude by the shoulder. "I'm totally lost here, and it's _kinda _freaking me out!"

Claude shoved Peter off roughly, smacking him against a dumpster, not even breaking stride. _Hold it- _Claude thought suddenly, pulling up to a sharp halt_. Here, __right __here, standing here, is - what, the most powerful bloke on Earth? No memory whatsoever, and tagging after me like a lost duckling, totally dependent on me for his memories- and __right __at a time when I'm being tracked down by Bennet and his Company, and fleeing for my life- and here __I __am, aiming to just __walk __away, to just abandon the kid in an alley, for Hell knows who to find. What am I bloody __thinking? _"Yeah... yeah alright," Claude retorted acerbically, "you know what- fine. You want your memories? You're going to have to do a job for me first."

"A job?" Peter echoed uncertainly, blinking his lashless eyes under what would've been puzzled eyebrows, if they'd existed. "What kind of job?"

Claude grinned his barracuda smile. "Sorta hoping you'd ask."


	3. Sewer Crocs

**Disclaimer:** No one is paying me for this. My only reward is the occasional review, and the fun I derive from exploring this universe via fanfiction. I claim no Heroes characters or themes you may recall.

**Claimer:** Chazz, his copter, & albino sewer crocodiles belong to me. :)

**Author's Note:** Since Mohinder grew up in Madras, I assume he'd know the local lingo- the main languages spoken there are Tamil & English, and a street slang blend of Tamil, English, Telugu, & Hindustani, known as Madras Bashai. Listed below are the meanings of the foreign words you'll find in this chapter:

**Madras Bashai/Hindi Glossary:**

jaanvar: animal

kīciuvēn: I'll tear you apart

galiju: dirty

sothai: Rotten

najayaz: Illegitimate

ghadeesaaj paiyya: son of a watchmaker (or at least the closest equivalent I could find)

* * *

**=Chapter 3: Sewer Crocs=**

* * *

Mohinder woke up dazed, facedown, chest and cheek pressed to the gritty blacktop._ No, this can't be right, this can't be logical..._

The baffled geneticist shoved up on his hands and elbows, slid a knee under his chest, pressed down on the blacktop with his fingertips, and arched his back, dizzily jumping into a standing position.

Black iron fillings seemed to swarm his eyes for a minute, and he blinked repeatedly, struggling to see, struggling not to topple back down. His head throbbed madly, and reaching up, sliding his fingers under his curls, he felt a wide, swollen welt on the back of his head. _Someone knocked me out?_ Mohinder concluded uncertainly._ But why? Where is everybody? Last I remember- oh! _As his actual vision began to clear, mental images also flooded back on him in a tidal wave...

..._White-hot nuclear surge with a violet corona in the atmosphere, fantastically exploding superhuman, Isaac Mendez' painting, New York blown up! No wait- not blown up? What- oh, Peter must have flown high enough not to incinerate us all! Fantastic! Yes, now I remember; Peter exploded, Matt Parkman's in the E.R., I washed my bloody hands from holding down on Parkman's bullet-wounds- yes, my sleeves are still verifiably bloody- then Molly was crying, and I was holding her, and- and now I'm here. _It was like a video with a piece cut out in the middle. Mohinder had zero recollection of what happened in the in-between bit._ Hugging Molly, here. Hugging Molly, flat on my face in the parking lot. I was leaving, I- yes, I wanted to get Molly away from Primatech's building as fast as possible, but someone- they took her! Why would they knock me out? Did I fight them? How did I end up in the parking lot? This is row twenty-seven, this is right near where I parked- That's my taxi..._

"Molly!" Mohinder called out, feeling his throat tightening in something close to franticness. "Molly!" The nerve-racked geneticist stumbled over to his taxi- the door was flung wide open, the keys were still in the lock of the open door._ "Molly!"_ Mohinder exclaimed again- his voice escalating into a dry-throated shout. Again, no response. _Of course no response. Obviously, she's gone, obviously someone took her._ Screaming her name was admittedly somewhat pathetically futile.

Freaked out and shuddering slightly, Mohinder started charging back towards the Primatech skyscraper. _Maybe I can recover the security footage of Kirby Plaza, and take it somewhere with electricity so I can view it, and perhaps that will shed some light on that slice of time I can't remember-_

-But Mohinder staggered to a standstill as he dashed by Kirby Plaza's centerpiece.

The lights were off in the Plaza fountain, and its red Modern Art stairs still spiraled to nowhere. Only a few feet to the side of the fountain, a long smudge of cranberry red dragged across the grey stone underfoot, into a slightly dislodged manhole cover reading 'STORM DRAIN'. There was just _one_ imperative item missing from this scene- _Sylar._

The psychopath had been exactly _there, _on his side, unmoving, gored through the stomach, soaked in his own blood- and now all that was left of him was a streak of darkening hemoglobin near the manhole cover.

Mohinder stepped unwillingly closer, feeling all of a sudden sick and shivery, and mad with morbid curiosity. _Did someone remove the body? Or did Sylar... drag himself down there...? Could he possibly have survived? Had he only been faking death?_ And one final, improbable, yet horrifying thought tore at Mohinder's mind like cold fishhooks-_ Did Sylar take Molly?_

Still fuzzy and reeling from being knocked out, Mohinder kicked aside the manhole cover further, and crouched down, peering into the sewer. Flat black, all the way down. Not even the vague glimmer of murky light to throw a slight outline to distinguish shades of night-black from each other, just total black. Reaching into his pocket, Mohinder grabbed out and flipped open his cell phone to use as a mini-flashlight- but the device was dead. No response. EMPs killed it. The battery was shot. He snapped the phone shut and pocketed it again irritably._ If I go down there, I'm going down blind._

That should have been enough of an impediment to keep him on the surface. But Mohinder was feeling brazen, and had the idea that there might be some sort of construction worker light switch or electric lamp down below, that may have been sheltered from the EMPS enough to survive- actually, no. That was just delusionally hopeful guesswork. He had no_ clue_ about sewer lightning. He'd never actually considered going down in one before- it hadn't exactly been on the list of scientific endeavors he wanted to tackle in his life. Nonetheless, he somehow found himself stepping down the narrow metal rungs, descending into the grungy unknown.

"I wouldn't try that," warned a greasy voice from behind and above. "I mean, that is _so _not what I would be trying."

Mohinder spun fast toward the direction of the sound, accidentally losing his grip on the blood-slick ladder, and just barely slamming his arms out against the cylindrical storm drain walls to keep from falling. Grabbing the ladder again with one hand, he instinctively snatched for the gun in his coat pocket- it was gone. _Why _was it gone?

"Way to go shattering my notions of how the world operates," the voice above complained. "Up until now I'd kinda figured a guy had to be smart to be a geneticist. Prerequisite thing, ya know? And yet here _you _are, climbing down a drainhole into NYC sewer system, with a psycho killer out to getcha, and all of New York about to go 'Boom'!"

"The explosion already occurred," Mohinder informed the voice, while climbing back up until he was shoulder-level with the manhole, so he could even see who he was talking to. "How could you _not_ know that?"

"Huh?" The man glanced up at the smoggy sky. "_Already?_ Wow, like, WAY less carnage than I'd imagined. Ya know, movies tend to make it sound scarier. Ya know, the explosion wasn't _supposed_ to be till..." He trailed off to tap his wristwatch and make faces at it, then added, "Huh. this watch, is _dead_."

"It happened high enough in the stratosphere to neutralize most of the damage," Mohinder elucidated, rapidly assessing the stranger looming above him. Mid-thirties, probably- and wearing casual jeans, and a non-casual suitjacket with the sleeves cut off messily at the elbow, revealing short hairy arms. On his face he sported a pair of technicolor blue shades, and a lopsided lamprey smile.

"Wow, can anyone say 'mega-lucky-beyond-all-sanity?'" the man replied in nervous awe. "Just one quick question- um, _how_ did it happen high enough in the stratosphere and all that jazz?"

"Just another quick question- _who _are you?" Mohinder shot back edgily.

"Oh!" Lurching forward, and grinning, which sent the half-shaved, wiry stubble on his face into weird patterns, the man grabbed Mohinder's hand, and shook it sharply as he pulled him the rest of the way to the surface. "Hi, my name's Chazz, and- ick, you must be covered with sewer-ladder slime and fallout dust, I mean right?" Giving a squeamish look, Chazz brushed off the handshake on the side of his jacket.

"You're with Primatech, aren't you?" Mohinder retorted, subconsciously taking note of the fact that Chazz was about two inches shorter and two inches wider than him, and logging the info away in the part of his mind which was prepping for a fistfight. "Who knocked me out? Where's Molly Walker?! That little girl with the virus who Thompson hired me to cure? _Where_ is she?"

"What, you lost the kid?" Chazz replied in a cross between amusement and dismay. "You _lost_ the kid who can find anyone?"

"Where_ is_ she?" Mohinder snarled, seizing Chazz by his suit lapels, and twisting his fists into the pinstriped flannel, stretching it hard against his knuckles. "She was in my taxi, now she's gone! If you people took her, I need to know!" _Please say you did, please tell me it __wasn't__ Sylar,_ Mohinder mentally added.

"Hey, _hey_, we don't have her- I was sent on a rescue mission to retrieve you and Miss Walker!" Chazz retorted indignantly, holding his hands up in the 'I surrender' position. "Your demise, averting it? Incineration, saving your ass from? Look, I dunno whose company oversight this was, but you weren't supposed to be anywhere _near_ here when Petrelli went nuclear."

"_What_ did you say?" Mohinder shot back, as earlier facets of their chat caught up with his dazed mind- facts like Chazz saying his watch was off, and saying the explosion '_wasn't supposed to happen yet_'.

"Yeah, there was a guy supposed to airlift you and the kid, and Thompson, and the Petrellis and some other folk outta here, but he freaked when you guys didn't show, and took off premature. I'm the backup copter guy. Hi," Chazz added with a sarcastic little hand-wave.

"_How_ did you know when Peter would explode?" Mohinder demanded viciously, shoving Chazz backward until the man was forced to splashily back-step into the dead fountain, and slamming Chazz's back against the side of the twisty red stairs.

"The Mendez paintings, y'know?" Chazz coughed, looking annoyed and confused at the rough treatment. "P.S., _ow_ this hurts, _what_ the hell are you doing?"

"No, I mean, _how_ did you people know the _exact_ time Peter would explode?" Mohinder specified sharply.

"Precogs and time-traveler tip-offs," Chazz sighed, as if it were as obvious as quark-gluon plasma being hot. "Yeesh."

"So you_ knew_, you knew Peter would explode today, you knew the exact time, even- and you didn't warn _anyone?" _Mohinder snarled in disbelief. "You were going to let all of New York, _all_ those people, get nuked?"

"Hey, don't machine-gun the messenger," Chazz retorted. "Backup copter guy, remember?"

Mohinder finally uncurled his fists from the man's jacket, as his mind returned to a more immediate concern. "Do you have a digital phone?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Does it _work?"_

"Well, my _watch_ was dead-" Chazz pulled a small black shape out of his pocket, powered it on with a flicker of graphics and an annoying little 'woosh' boot-up sound, and then added, "No, yeah, it works."

Mohinder wordlessly snatched the Samsung BlackJack, and immediately headed back towards the open storm drain.

"Hey-hey, no way!" Chazz said, rapidly rounding around Mohinder, and blocking his path. "You can't go back down there, are you _deranged?_ How hard did your head get hit anyhow?"

"If Primatech doesn't have Molly,_ Sylar_ might," Mohinder shot back darkly. "He was stabbed, he was _right _here, and now he's gone, and she's gone!"

"Wow, Sylar was stabbed?" Chazz repeated blankly. "Like, fatally?"

"Obviously _not_, now get out of my way!"

"Maybe the paramedics took him?" Chazz suggested.

"I was with them the whole time until they left, they_ didn't_. And explain _that,_" Mohinder snapped, pointing down at the blood-stain streaking down into the sewer.

Chazz shrugged noncommittally. "Albino sewer crocodiles."

"What?"

"Albino sewer crocodiles," Chazz repeated casually. "They like, live down in the sewers, ya know? They just, cruise along, warmed by the steamy air and gorging on NYC rats, roaches and garbage. See, in the 1950s and 60s, mondo numbers of baby Spectacled Caimans were sold to tourists visiting Florida. So New Yorkers took 'em home, but then the gators, they became ill or too large for their owners to manage, so the owners just got ticked with the beasties and flushed 'em down toilets and kicked 'em down drain grates, and the reptiles wound up as eternal slimy sewery residents. Maybe one of 'em nabbed Sylar's corpse for an evening snack." Chazz smirked in response to Mohinder's scientifically skeptical expression. "Kidding. What, don't you have urban legends in India?"

"You're wasting my time," Mohinder concluded roughly, forcibly shoving the talking roadblock out of his way.

"Likewise, Doc," Chazz muttered, as Mohinder stepped back down the grimy ladder, totally ignoring him. "What are you gonna do once you find Sylar? Huh? What are you gonna do once you find him?" Chazz abruptly bapped the side of Mohinder's skull with his knuckles, and snapped, "Hey! I'm talkin' here! Act like you got ears! What are you gonna do once you find him?"

"End his twisted existence!" Mohinder retorted venomously, while gripping the uneven rungs in hard fists, and quickly descending out of head-bapping distance of Chazz.

"_How?"_

"I _don't _know!" Mohinder admitted in furious helplessness, pausing momentarily on the ladder, and clunking his forehead against a bloody rung in frustration. Which accomplished nothing but making his head hurt on three sides instead of two.

"You know what," Chazz went on, "I'm pretty sure there's some unpronounceable psychiatric term to describe your common-sense-deprived-state... Oh, delusional, that'll work. You're _delusional_, doc. There's nuthin' you can do right now. Seriously. Quit being an idiot. Yeesh. I hate reasoning with concussed geneticists. Remind me never to do it again. I'm crossing it off all future to-do lists."

"I thought you said _you_ came here looking for Molly too," Mohinder called up, as the cylindrical wall opened up to his left, and the sound of rushing waste-water grew louder, and the repulsive smell became oppressive. "Shouldn't you be showing the slightest interest in_ helping_ me find her?"

"Sure, but it's not _real_ clever stumbling around in the dark- unarmed, hunting a brain-slicing, multi-superpowered villain- as awesome as that sounds," Chazz countered glibly, his words echoing off the confined sewer walls. "Look, I don't even think Sylar _knew _about the 'Walker System', or that it was a girl- but even assuming he did, if _he _took her, he's not gonna play tea-party with the kid- she'll be dead long before we get there. Skull sliced. Brain eaten. Yes, depressing thought, but true? Very. Now if you don't mind, it's my ass on the line here if I don't get you somewhere safe, and soon. Believe it or not, your expertise, and research, and general brainpower are valuable commodities to the people I work for. Go figure, huh?"

"More valuable than the life of Molly Walker?" Mohinder retaliated, as he stepped off the ladder, and onto a narrow ledge by a crumbly wall with twisty metal bits and pipes poking out from the bricking.

"Admittedly no," Chazz called down louder, "but I'm cutting losses here. Just give me my phone back, and I'll call in a team to search for her. Including an infrablue visionist. _Trust _me, he could find her WAY better than you could."

Vaguely wondering what 'infrablue' was, Mohinder held the flickery blue screen of the Samsung phone down close to the ground, trying to make out which way the trail of blood led. Very quickly, he realized it was no use- the dark blood was practically invisible against the moldy, mucky concrete- and besides which, the maintenance area branched off into three different tunnels. Without a map, he'd get lost down here fast as blinking-_ And cell phone towers are down, so I can't Google 'map of sewers under Kirby Plaza' on the internet,_ Mohinder concluded dourly, as he tried this futile idea.

"_MOLLY?!" _he shouted out as loudly as his larynx could manage, creeping forwards into the maintenance tunnel anyway. "MOLLY, CAN YOU HEAR ME? _SYLAR? If you took her, I SWEAR you'll pay, you bloody JAANVAR! _I swear _kīciuvēn, _you galiju, sothai, _najayaz_ ghadeesaaj paiyya!"

Mocking echoes of the harsh Madras slang ricocheted back at him. Other than that, silence.

Punching a slimy brick wall, giving up, Mohinder re-climbed the rusty rungs, returned to the topside, handed Chazz back his phone, and asked tartly, "And how do you plan to call a rescue team with no cell service?"

Chazz keyed a number Mohinder couldn't see into the smartphone, then said, "Secret frequencies," as the dial tone began. "Yeah, yeah I found Doctor Suresh," Chazz said into the phone. "….No. ….._Nnn_o... ….Not them either. Look, there's a bit of a crisis- Walker wasn't with the Doc. And apparently Sylar's still alive, and got away, and might be munching on mouthfuls of her brain as we speak. …..No, he doesn't know. He's all concussed and wacko. …..Yeah. ….Yeah, okay. ...What was that? ….Gotcha. ….So you'll get a unit down here, right? Make sure Sauron's on it. ….Great. …...Ah, yeesh, really? Fine, whatev. Will do. Over and out. …...I know, I know, I just like saying it. I like the clandestine 'ring' to it."

"What was all that about?" Mohinder asked impatiently, as Chazz pocketed the Samsung.

"Ah, agenty stuff. Nothin' much. So you say sponge-boy Petrelli just, uh, flew off, huh? Where's his brother, the Grinch-grin politician?"

"Dead," Mohinder said with a pang of horror and respect, only now remembering the Congressman's sacrifice. _I hardly knew him. I owe him my life. I can never thank him, _he thought emptily. "He's the one who flew- he flew Peter safely into the stratosphere- he was at the epicenter, he'd have been vaporized- there's no chance he survived. Nathan Petrelli saved thousands of lives- he was the ultimate hero tonight."

"Huh. Vaporized. Guess that makes my job simple," Chazz said breezily, without even a hint of pity or remorse for the dead Congressman. "Now just to collect up Thompson, and-"

"Thompson's dead too," Mohinder snapped. "Bennet shot him."

"Huh. Guess that makes my job simpler. C'mon doc, the copter's this way."

"You are phenomenally out-of-synch with human decency," Mohinder retorted in disgust, feeling suddenly fiercely defensive of Nathan._ "Why_ didn't you tell New York citizens about Peter's impending radioactive meltdown? You essentially signed their death warrants, and it's_ only_ thanks to the intervention of Nathan Petrelli that_ any _of us are still here!"

"C'm_on," _Chazz scoffed, jutting his jaw sideways in slack sarcasm. "You honestly think the average New Yorker would'a believed us if we said some flaky hospice nurse was gonna spontaneously combust and incinerate the Big Apple? Huh?"

"They most certainly would have evacuated the city if there'd been a public alert announcement warning them of a nuclear terrorist attack! And yes, until proven otherwise, I'm calling you people terrorists."

Chazz winced. "Hey, hey, _ouch._ Harsh pal, harsh."

"You _wanted_ a national catastrophe, didn't you?" Mohinder accused, clenching his mildew-slimed fists confrontationally. "All of New York. Thousands of innocents. And all in the name of what? For what agenda?"

"_Yeesh, _it's not like_ I _was the guy lounging around in the middle of the hugest city in the U.S., leaking radiation from every pore like an idiot!" Chazz exclaimed, throwing his short arms out to his sides, then dropping them again. "Seriously Doc, you're blowing this_ way_ out of proportion. Primatech ain't this all-powerful omniscient evil entity you think it is- we're just people! Human error, it happens. And superhuman error. _And_ betrayal, deaths, and other distractions. And F.Y.I., we put _way_ more effort into trying to avert this potential calamity than _you _ever did. So cut us some slack, quit jumping to conclusions like you're on an accusation trampoline, and _try_ to remember that I'm just an uninformed flunkey, would ya? C'mon, copter's this way, and it's getting lonely."

"And why should I come with you in any event?" Mohinder snapped, not quite in the mood to believe Chazz.

"Because I asked VERY nicely. Didn't catch it the first two times? Here, let me try again: Please, oh please, Doctor Suresh, I am cordially imploring you to please, please follow me to my copter, if you please, so that I can fly you to safety. Please. Prettified please with small red, stemmed fruit on top."

"Not happening," Mohinder retorted, his mind wheeling back to the missing girl. "I'm staying to look for Molly until your 'infra-blue' search and rescue team gets here."

"Doc," Chazz sighed drably, pointing off to the parking lot, "you said left the kid in a taxi, and wow! Would you lookit that, the trail of blood goes _straight_ down into the sewer, nowhere _near _any taxis."

"Sylar has telekinesis, he could have, potentially, mentally pulled her over-" Mohinder suggested feebly, but the suggestion was sounding improbable even to him. Sylar wouldn't have neatly unlocked the taxi. _It's not his style. He's blunt, destructive. There would've been melted metal, broken glass- something._

"_Right,_" Chazz mocked. "I'll bet that's _just _what he did. Look, you're forgetting that the Walker System was _our _project long before she was yours. Believe me, we want to recover her _probably _even more than you do, Hero."

"I_ very_ much doubt that." Mohinder spun sharply away from Chazz, and charged back towards the Company's sky-rise building again.

"Hey, c'mon! _Now _where're you going?" Chazz whined, his fancy penny loafers clicking on the blacktop as he rushed to catch up.

"I have to review the Kirby Plaza security footage," Mohinder growled, without breaking stride.

"It probably got blacked out along with all the rest of the electric!" Chazz called out irritably.

"Sensitive security surveillance generally has quality surge protectors, there's a chance the footage survived!" Mohinder shot back.

The geneticist was barely five feet through the double doors of the Linderman skyscraper, when abruptly, a bald, pale-eyed man grabbed his wrist, thwacked him facefirst onto the floor, stepped a formal shoe onto his spine, and shoved a gun up against the back of his neck.


	4. Info Gap

**Author's Note: **The Sikorsky X2 Executive does not exist. Basically, it's a classic Sikorsky S-92 Executive copter, but with a few ritzy updates- I added the counter-rotating dual-rotor system of the experimental super-fast Sikorsky X2, & some of the endurance & stealth features of the currently still-in-production S-97 Raider.

* * *

**=Chapter 4: Info Gap=**

* * *

"You! You were the last one seen with Thompson! What happened, scientist?" the bald man barked, driving the weight of his heel even harder into Mohinder's back. "Did _you_ kill him? TALK!"

"Hi, Stanley!" Chazz greeted casually, strolling in through the nearby entryway.

"_No. _No, I _seriously_ don't know you, Mr. Sunglasses. I already got burned for letting that psychic cop in here, now you tell me who the hell you _really_ are!" Stanley demanded, pulling out a second gun and aiming it toward Chazz.

"Chazz Randazzo, Backup copter guy, Sector Nine. We kinda need to see surveillance. We've kinda got clearance." Chazz held up his smartphone, and Mohinder cautiously strained his neck to see the picture on the screen- it was the symbol. The helix figure that had been showing up everywhere- on the cover of his father's book, drawn onto the photos of evolved humans in Sylar's apartment- the symbol had even showed up in the algorithm.

Anyway, it was apparently enough to convince Stanley that Chazz was a colleague, since he reluctantly lowered the gun pointed at Chazz, and grumbled,_ "I _can't even get in to surveillance. Linderman's got a nerf ball-sized hole in his head, and Thompson's corpse is in a biohazard waste bin, and some guy exploded, and all the electric's down, and I've got no _freakin' _idea what's going on around here!"

"Chill, my very jumpy pal," Chazz drawled. "And get that gun off the professor before you make a mess, HQ wants him alive."

Reluctantly, Stanley put his other gun away, and stepped off of Mohinder.

Staggering to his feet, Mohinder blinked again to get his briefly fogged-over vision back, brushed the dust off his freshly-bruised chin, and asked Stanley urgently, "Where's the security footage of Kirby plaza, particularly the parking lot and fountain?"

"No way you're getting into surveillance, clearance or not," Stanley argued. "The security key is electrical, you can't get in. No way."

"What if you shot it open?" Mohinder persisted, glancing at Stanley's gun holsters.

Stanley shook his wide head dourly. "You wouldn't be able to view the footage anyway. This place is deadlocked."

"_Doesn't_ this building have backup generators?" Mohinder groaned, infuriated with all the minor delays.

Stanley shrugged his chunky shoulders under his blue suit. "Hey, don't look at me, I'm just a security guard."

"Hey, hey, I just remembered-" Chazz rattled off suddenly, "-everything surveyed here is transmitted over to HQ's servers! I'll just have 'em send over the Kirby Plaza surveillance to my copter, and we can watch it there. C'mon, doc," he added, clapping a hand on Mohinder's shoulder, and guiding him back towards the exit.

"_Fine,"_ Mohinder muttered tensely, following the slightly shorter and way more casual man back out to the plaza.

Chazz led him past some blue umbrellas and metal picnic tables and chairs, around the back of the skyscraper, and then towards a sleek, double-rotored helicopter, which looked like a massive, evil, grey and blue dragonfly.

Mohinder approached the parked copter rapidly, eager to view the security tapes, desperate to get a grip on what had happened in those critical minutes he couldn't remember.

Chazz punched in a security code with his thumb, and pulled down the combo door-stepladder in a zippy fashion, obviously just as impatient.

Mohinder snatched the metal hand rails and scaled the three-step ladder in two steps, following Chazz into the posh interior. There were several white suede seats inside, arranged facing each other in a personal, living-room style, with slim side-tables and cup-holders lining the walls, underneath the small square windows, and soft overhead lighting. Mohinder quickly sought out the in-flight TV, but Chazz instead directed him to a fold-out viewscreen and keyboard on the wall.

The computer booted up with a happy little beep, then Chazz held his right hand over his left, hiding part of the keyboard, as he typed in a seven-asterisk password. Mohinder only caught a 'e' and a '4'. A Windows logo came up as the computer started up, then Chazz quickly pulled up a live, video link.

"Hey, hey!" Chazz said brightly, as a African-featured man with a blonde buzz-cut and a sleek Bluetooth earpiece appeared onscreen. "As you can see, I got the Doc," Chazz said, motioning his hands towards Mohinder, "but the thing is, our DNA-addict friend can't remember who knocked his lights out, and he's got some jello-brained idea that Sylar stole the Walker kid, so if you'd be a pal and send over the security feeds from building eleven to put the Doc's mind at ease, the east parking lot and plaza- that'd be spiffy, 'kay?"

The viewscreen man seemed to consider it, then said, "It looks like there's flaws in the footage, but here goes. Transmission might take a minute." He vanished off the viewscreen, to be replaced with a little blue loading bar- it was the irritating type, the type that just flickered back and forth, without showing any actual progress.

Mohinder waited impatiently, all nerves; eyes stuck on the screen, on that little pulsing rectangle. _What if it's worst-case-scenario?_ he fretted. _What if the footage shorts out just as Peter explodes, and this is just another dead end? No, wait- worst-case scenario would be if Sylar actually __did__ take Molly; video proof, confirmation._

Abruptly, there was a dull buzzing, cranking noise, and Mohinder glanced away sharply- he suddenly noticed Chazz was missing- the copter door was closing upwards mechanically, and Chazz was up in the cockpit, pulling levers and keying things in.

Mohinder stumbled up to the cockpit in a rush. "I said I was staying!" he snapped loudly, as outside and above, the double rotors started noisily whirring, whining, and spinning.

"Yeah, well, new's flash!, you're _not_," Chazz bit back.

"Put this copter down," Mohinder demanded dangerously.

"You really wanna try something?" Chazz scoffed, turning a mysterious dial that made puzzling green and orange meters light up on one of the seven copter viewscreens. "How much d'you know about flying one of these? Let me guess, nothing, zilch?"

"Get back on your 'secret frequency'," Mohinder hissed irately, "I want to talk to whoever's in charge of Primatech."

"I don't know who's in charge," Chazz replied apologetically, as the viewscreens threw colorful specks of light on his blueberry-lensed sunglasses.

"Who were you talking to?" Mohinder persisted.

"I can't tell you that."

"Why can't you tell me that?"

"I can't tell tell you that either."

"_Why_ not?" Mohinder growled.

"Look, when they want you to know, you'll know, ya know?"

"No, _enough_ secrecy!" Mohinder snapped, fighting the urge to punch either Chazz or the switchboard. "Now I entered into a contract with Thompson, and he's _dead._ You're going to tell me exactly who I'm working with, or I'm terminating that contract."

"Hey, genius, you really think you're gonna take out Sylar on your own?" Chazz retorted dourly. "Realistically? You and your shotgun and syringe needles against _his_ kinda freakazoidal powers? Last I recall, you joined forces with the Company because you _have_ no force. You need us."

"And you need me," Mohinder shot back, matching Chazz's dark tone. "I agreed to work with Primatech on _my_ terms,_ not _yours."

Chazz grinned tightly, but the rest of his face was stone-cold sarcastic. "Now you may think you're kinda tough- hell, you might even _be_ tough," he began, "but I swear, if Sylar gets you, he WILL get that new formula from ya, and you're gonna be responsible for the R-rated gruesome deaths of a whole superhuman hitlist. Think you could live with that?"

"How'd you know about the formula?" Mohinder demanded, remembering with a spark of thrill about the four-gene key he'd isolated in Sylar's spinal fluid, the key to making a new list.

"Eh, you may have missed a couple of the bugs in your apartment. Did you check the cockroach on the windowsill?"

"You're kidding!" Mohinder replied in dismayed disbelief. He'd checked his apartment obsessively for any unusual electronics after his encounter with that fake exterminator- he'd even shelled out 80 bucks on eBay for a professional, full-frequency bug and camera detector.

"Yeah, okay, kidding," Chazz admitted with a toothy snigger. "No one _really_ hides bugs in bugs. Bet you never thought to check all those pushpins on that map of yours, though."

"You hid a listening device, in a_ pushpin_," Mohinder repeated, a bit impressed despite himself.

"Nah. We just raided your voice diaries."

"Oh," Mohinder replied flatly, considerably less impressed. "You know, for an _uninformed flunkey_, you certainly seem to know a lot."

"Hey, could you cut the antagonism, and go watch that surveillance footage already?"

Irritably, Mohinder stalked back to the cabin viewscreen. He got there just as the flickery loading bar completed. The screen went momentarily black, and then nine boxes appeared onscreen, labeled Camera 1, Camera 2, Camera 3, Camera 4, Camera 5, Camera 6, Camera 7, Camera 8, and Camera 9. There was the date and time up in the top left corner of the screen- 11/08/2006-9:27, and the words_ CCTV Megapixel WiFi._

The top row of three showed different angles of the parking lot, and the remaining six boxes showed Kirby Plaza from different angles. Instantly zeroing in on a yellow taxi paintjob, Mohinder slid his fingers over the laptop touchpad, and clicked on the middle top box, toggling it to fullscreen. It was a slightly fisheye view of the parking lot, with high frame rate, and decent resolution, and considering this was New York, it looked very quiet and mostly empty. Except for two small figures racing over the blacktop- him and Molly. Mohinder clicked the little zoom magnifying glass icon in the corner screen, zooming in a bit. Onscreen, he was opening the taxi door, Molly was crawling into the back seat-

-suddenly, slight static lines flickered over the screen then it just fizzed in green and purple electronic jpeg artifacts, then went black.

"What happened?!" Mohinder exclaimed, zooming back out so he could see all nine screens again. They were all just as disturbingly, static-flecked black.

Mohinder quickly clicked the instant rewind button, holding down on it until he was back at the part of the footage where the ambulances were driving off, and he was leading Molly to the parking lot-

-A car was pulling out of the parking lot in Camera view 1. An elderly couple was walking past the fountain in Camera 5. In Camera 4, a man and a kid were walking out through a the side of the skyscraper- straight through the industrial steel wall.

Startled, Mohinder rewound again, just to make sure he hadn't imagined it. Even from this far out, he could easily recognize the two as that technopath kid who'd activated the broken elevator, and the kid's father, D.L.. Mohinder had only met D.L. briefly in the Plaza building and ambulance- he'd had no clue that D.L. was special too! Just more evidence that the gene that triggered these abilities was hereditary... Regretting now that he hadn't asked D.L. For his last name, Mohinder rewound again, and watched the two walk through the wall again, entranced by this new power- _intangibility? Dematerializing? But how does it work?_ Was it based on string theory somehow- did D.L.'s cells actually shift to a slightly different dimension, or pocket dimension, to allow him to pass through solid objects unharmed? Or did it have more to do with particle physics and quantum tunneling?

Snapping back to reality, Mohinder quickly scanned the rest of the cameras for signs of movement- not much was happening. He and Molly were hurrying towards the taxi, D.L. and his family were getting into a car, and Sylar was still on his side next to the fountain in the lower left box. Actually, wait- a vague shadowy flicker appeared by Sylar, and then-

-and then the green and purple static fizz flashed. Mohinder's throat muscles tensed as all nine screens shorted out again.

"This is no good, I need to find out what happened _after_ this!" Mohinder muttered sharply.

"Sorry, technical difficulties," said the voice of the techie on the computer. "All the footage after this is scrapped for about forty-five minutes. We're trying to recover it- but it's being difficult."

"How long will it take?"

"Can't say."

Mohinder just barely restrained himself from damaging something, and instead hit rewind again, put the video in slow motion, and zoomed in on Camera 7, on Sylar's supposedly dead body. Yes, in the brief four seconds before the screen shorted out, the air shifted. Mohinder wasn't sure how else to describe it- just a slight warp in the atmosphere. Like a heat wave or mirage. But the last visible frame was the most disturbing- because in that split-second before the fuzz, Sylar vanished.

Mohinder rewound it five more times, his panic level increasing by the second.

"Sylar vanished!" he exclaimed finally, charging back to the cockpit. "In the last frame of footage, Sylar just evaporated, into thin air- are there any abilities you know that could do that?"

Chazz just shrugged. "Maybe it was a glitch."

"Peter Petrelli!" Mohinder realized aloud, "He went invisible right before Sylar killed him with glass in my apartment, ergo Peter must have encountered an evolved human with cloaking abilities! Did Sylar find that same person and take their power? Or could someone with invisibility have dragged Sylar down into the sewers?"

"Glitch," Chazz repeated.

"No, _something _happened, and I need to know what- I need to know what happened to Sylar, I need to know Molly isn't d-" He couldn't bring himself to say it out loud. It was like admitting it was an option.

"Hey, you know, just chill already about the Walker kid," Chazz said, almost kindly. "You'd never have met her if not for us. Now there's _nothing_ you can do, and _yeah_, life's epically lame sometimes, but we've got teams of experts on her case already, we're on it, we've got it covered." Chazz held two fingertips to his ear suddenly, where, Mohinder noticed, was a small silver earpiece-com. "Uh-huh, gotcha," Chazz said into the com.

"Do I get to know who_ that _was?" Mohinder asked cynically, not really expecting a straight answer by this point.

"Right, reminder from HQ, they want you decontaminated. Like, presto." Chazz grabbed a hard-plastic briefcase off the copilot seat, and shoved it into Mohinder's hands. It was cold to the touch, and beamy yellow, with the nuclear symbol on the front, in mauve, and the words _Nuclear Survival Kit™_. "There's instructions inside," Chazz added briskly. "There's a lavatory in back. Hop to it."

Turning his back on Chazz, Mohinder stalked off mechanically to the back of the copter, with the words '_nothing you can do_' echoing in his rebellious mind.

The lavatory was tiny and chrome-themed, with cold aqua lighting. Maneuvering around the toilet and setting the yellow briefcase on the counter-top next to the tiny sink, Mohinder tugged it open. At a glance, the contents included plastic gloves, breath masks, iodine pills, three labeled spraybottles, trash bags, an info-manual, a dosimeter, and caution labels.

The 'Instructions for Use' were conveniently displayed on the inside lid of the briefcase, and Mohinder skimmed over the words quickly-

_STEP 1: If possible, remove yourself to a non-contaminated area immediately before beginning decontamination. Remain calm and use the buddy system, one person decontaminating another person if possible. Locate radioactive material with radiation detector if available and remove any contaminated clothing. _

Mohinder absently picked up the easy-use, Geiger-Mueller dosimeter. It was about the size of a calculator. Pointing it at himself, he pressed the single square button- it started clicking instantly, getting quicker and louder, then beeping as the meter went past 20 millirem- and slowly climbed to a startling final reading of 130,000 millirem, or 130 rem. Mohinder had some common knowledge on radiation poisoning- after all, he _had_ known a couple of chemical pathologists and nuclear physicists back at Chennai University, not to mention all those hours he'd spent researching radiation and its potential for cell mutation. 130 rem was bad, but not life-threatening.

Still, he quickly consulted the kit's info-manual to refresh his memory.

_100-200 REM: Acute Radiation Poisoning_

_Time to Onset:_

_2__-6 hours_

_Symptoms:_

_Moderate nausea and vomiting_

_Temporary headache_

_Fatigue_

_Weakness_

_Moderate leukopenia (white blood cell reduction)_

_Increased susceptibility to infections_

_Delayed traumatic and surgical wound healing_

_Haemorrhage_

_Temporary male sterility is common_

_Hair loss within 2-3 weeks_

Well, that all sounded just _great. _Sighing stressfully through his teeth, Mohinder stripped off his jacket and shirt, and stuffed them in one of the kit's trash bags. Tugging the door shut, he took off his shoes and pants, dropped them in the corner, then glanced back at the briefcase lid, and read:

_STEP 2: Put on face mask being sure to cover mouth and nose adequately. _

Suresh pulled on the combo surgical face mask and respirator, feeling a little cold and ridiculous.

_STEP 3: Decontaminate (as described below) your partner's hands first then have your partner put on a pair of exam gloves. Remove your exam gloves and have your partner decontaminate your hands. Put on a new pair of exam gloves provided and continue decontamination. _

Chazz was flying the copter, and Mohinder didn't want his help getting decontaminated anyway, so he just yanked on a pair of synthetic gloves and skipped straight to the tedious decontamination instructions:

_Decontaminate small areas at a time and discard each rad-wipe after use. Do not reuse rad-wipes as this may spread the contamination. Handle the red plastic side and wipe using the white absorbent side. Handle all contaminated wipes and clothing with the tongs provided whenever possible to minimize exposure. _

_A. Spray on a generous amount of BLUE LABELED Solution (Transition Metals). Let stand for a few seconds but DO NOT LET DRY! _

_B. Aggressively wipe and dry thoroughly with the plastic-backed (red) rad-wipes provided. Be sure to wipe up ALL solution since any Quick Decon™ Mass Effect™ solution left on the surface/s may now contain radioactive material. _

_C. Dispose of rad-wipes as "rad-waste" in trash bag provided. _

_D. Repeat steps A-C with YELLOW LABELED Solution (Actinide Metals). This will be necessary if the elemental type of radioactivity is unknown. _

_E. Use spare water bottle (previously filled by customer with simple tap water) to wash down affected areas. Use wipes to aggressively clean areas again and remove any residual Mass Effect™ solution. Dispose of rad-wipes as indicated above- _

-And the last three notes just went on about cautionary methods to avoid getting recontaminated, so Mohinder skipped those.

Grabbing the color-coded 32 oz. blue bottle, he sprayed the blue solution over one arm and half his torso, then wiped it off as instructed, sprayed on the yellow solution, sprayed on the tap water, then wiped it off again, and repeated the procedure on the other side of his torso, his neck, back, and legs. Despite his best efforts, some of the solution got in the the cuts and fork-stabs Sylar had given him back when he'd pinned him to his apartment's ceiling. The stinging sensation dragged his thoughts right back to that moment, right back to that feeling of total, inept helpless... sort of like what he was feeling now.

Lastly, Mohinder moved to the sink to wash off his hands and face. He stripped off his gloves, tapped the soap dispenser, put his hands under the warm water, then splashed his face-

-he paused, leaving the water running, as he saw himself in the mirror- there was a long black smudge trickling down his forehead and right cheek. Mohinder quickly glanced at his hands, and saw, in shock, that there were words penned onto his right palm. He frantically tried to make out the smeared letters as they melted down his palm in black streaks- but all he could decipher were the fragmented words-

_ey pursue us, Molly will die._

_soon as you get the chan_

_could actually make a differen_

_723-294-53_

Something seemed oddly familiar about the line right before the unfinished phone number... and then it hit him. "_Together, we could actually make a difference." _That's what Bennet had told him when he'd first invited him to join Primatech.

Mohinder blinked sharply as he got a brief memory flash of his elbow hitting into the taxi mirror, and Bennet's gun in his face- and he finally pieced it together. _Bennet _took Molly.

Mohinder almost stormed up front to inform Chazz immediately, but then he remembered the 'pursue us, Molly will die' part of the message. _And_ that he was still just in his boxers, face mask, and socks. And the water was still running. Mohinder stared at his palm for another minute, memorizing what was left of the phone number. Next he washed it off, twisted the trickling faucet shut, neatly packed up the decon kit, and then yanked on his pants and shoes, ignoring the fact they were probably still radioactively contaminated.

_723-294-53, _he kept repeating in his head. He needed to figure out the last two digits of that phone number, and he needed to call it as soon as possible- but not here, not on Chazz's phone, in Chazz's copter.

Hurrying back up towards the cockpit, Mohinder asked, "Where are we flying to, and how long will it take till we get there?"

"Hey, hey, don't rush her," Chazz retorted. "This is a Sikorsky X2 S-ninety-seven Executive- this design's not even on the market yet. With just us two aboard, this baby'll clock three hundred miles an hour. We'll have to make a brief pitstop in Kentucky to refuel, but according to this," he said, tapping the GPS, "we should be at Primatech Paper in six hours, give-take."

_Just enough time for my radiation sickness to kick in, _Mohinder thought dryly, as he wandered back to the spacious cabin.

_There a__re 100 possible combinations for a two-digit number, from 0 to 99, _the geneticist speculated, as he sank weakly into one of the white suede seats. _What the __deuce __did Bennet and I say to each other before he took Molly and knocked me out? __Why __did Bennet take Molly? __What __did the rest of the message say? What is Primatech's agenda? __How __did Sylar vanish? _

Mohinder pulled both of his harness straps in front of his chest, clasping them together over his sweaty torso, and closed his eyes in muted frustration.

_Yet again, there are no answers._


End file.
